The following contains excerpts from the book, Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet)
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. When dealing with the subject of Leadership, relationships become paramount, and how a leader treats people becomes the core issue that defines the success or failure of the leader.
This book is the account of the personal journey of the Captain of the U.S. submarine, Santa Fe. His journey to move away from the ‘top-down’ leadership structure to a crew-empowered autonomous structure is chronicled and discussed. He uses the terms leader-follower negatively and the term leader-leader positively, showing how he took the failing and demoralized crew of the Santa Fe to the top most-awarded sub in the Navy.
“We are in the middle of one of the most profound shifts in human history, where the primary work of mankind is moving from the Industrial Age of ‘control’ to the Knowledge Worker Age of ‘release.’ As Albert Einstein said, ‘The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.’ They certainly won’t be solved by one person; even, and especially, the one ‘at the top.’
“Leadership is the enabling art. It is the art of releasing human talent and potential. You may be able to ‘buy’ a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power, or fear, but a human being’s genius, passion, loyalty, and tenacious creativity are volunteered only. The world’s greatest problems will be solved by passionate, unleashed ‘volunteers.’”
“My definition of leadership is this: Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it themselves.” (Steven Covey, forward)
The top-down leadership model was “developed during a period when mankind’s primary work was physical. Consequently, it’s optimized for extracting physical work from humans.”
“In our modern world, the most important work we do is cognitive; so, it’s not surprising that a structure developed for physical work isn’t optimal for intellectual work. People who are treated as followers…have limited decision-making authority and little incentive to give the utmost of their intellect, energy, and passion. Those who take orders usually run at half speed, underutilizing their imagination and initiative.”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we encourage each student to become aware of their own potential, as well as those of their colleagues. Learning to see and believe in others is the first step towards developing a culture of trust and respect.
“Instead of trying to change mind-sets and then change the way we acted, we would start acting differently and the new thinking would follow.”
Marquet put the chiefs directly in charge of their own men. “This one-word administrative change put the chiefs squarely in charge of all aspects of managing their men, including their watch bills, qualification schedules, and training school enrollments…We called in ‘Chiefs in Charge.’”
“The first step in changing the genetic code of any organization or system is delegating control, or decision-making authority, as much as is comfortable, and then adding a pinch more. This isn’t an empowerment ‘program’…You can’t ‘direct’ empowerment programs. Directed empowerment programs are flawed because they are predicated on this assumption: I have the authority and ability to empower you (and you don’t). Fundamentally, that’s disempowering.”
“Right or wrong, I was committed to doing whatever I thought was best for Santa Fe, the Navy, and the nation without worrying about the repercussions. I called this the paradox of ‘caring but not caring’ – that is, caring intimately about your subordinates and the organization but caring little about the organizational consequences to yourself.”
“I decided we would try the route of talking ourselves into a new way of thinking. We called it the ‘three-name rule’ and this is how it worked: When any member of the crew saw a visitor on our boat…he was to greet the visitor using three names – the visitor’s name, his own name, and the ship’s name. For example, “Good morning, Commodore Kenny, my name is Petty Officer Jones, welcome aboard Santa Fe.”
In another instance, Marquet observed that “reviews were focused on avoiding errors, as opposed to accomplishing something…On their part, the review team needed to overcome a fear of criticism of an incomplete plan; on my part, I needed to refrain from jumping in with answers. We boiled this down to this motto: ‘A little rudder far from the rocks is a lot better than a lot of rudder close to the rocks.’”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we value efficient work based on successful strategies that have trained musicians for centuries. We call these ‘core competencies’ that always yield results. When practiced regularly, these techniques help the student to use their time well, just as a sharp axe will cut down a tree in shorter time than a dull axe.
“Short, early conversations make efficient work…many lasted only thirty seconds, but they saved hours of time.”
When Marquet took charge of the Santa Fe he had little technical knowledge of the ship, since he had been trained on a different kind of submarine.
In one instance, he realized he needed to not lean on his own technical expertise, but rather on the men under his charge. “I nudged Bill and suggested we increase speed from ‘ahead one third’ to ‘ahead two thirds’ on the EPM…’Ahead two thirds,’ he ordered. Nothing happened…No one said anything, and several awkward seconds passed…I asked the helmsman what was going on. He…reported over his shoulder, ‘Captain, there is no ahead two thirds on the EPM!’”
“What happens in a top-down culture when the leader is wrong? Everyone goes over the cliff.”
This led to Marquet developing a different way of leading. From then on, he would require his men to tell him what they were going to do. “Officers would state their intentions with ‘I intend to…’ and I would say, ‘Very well.’ Then each man would exercise his plan.”
“Although it may seem like a minor trick of language, we found that it profoundly shifted ownership of the plan to the officers.”
“The key to your team becoming more proactive rests in the language subordinates and superiors use. Here is a short list of ‘disempowered phrases’ that passive followers use:
- Request permission to…
- I would like to…
- What should I do about…
- Do you think we should…
- Could we…
Here is a short list of ‘empowered phrases’ that active doers use:
- I intend to…
- I plan on…
- I will…
- We will…
“Articulating their intentions, the officers and crew were acting their way into the next higher level of command…Instead of one captain giving orders to 134 men, we would have 135 independent, energetic, emotionally committed and engaged men thinking about what we needed to do and the way to do it right.”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we make it our goal to empower our students to become initiators of their own success. Instead of telling them what to do, we give them the tools to chart their own course successfully, obviously starting with some guidance, but ultimately giving them the reigns of their direction.
“Resist the urge to provide solutions…you have to create a space for open decision by the entire team, even if that space is only a few minutes, or a few seconds, long.
- If the decision needs to be made urgently, make it, then have the team ‘red-team’ the decision and evaluate it.
- If the decision needs to be made reasonably soon, ask for team input, even briefly, then make the decision.
- If the decision can be delayed, then force the team to provide inputs. Do not force the team to come to consensus; that results in whitewashing differences and dissenting votes. Cherish the dissension. If everyone thinks like you, you don’t need them.”
“Eliminate top-down monitoring systems…we unburdened ourselves of the effort of maintaining the tickler. This had two advantages. First, it would be most efficient because the work would be getting done without the overhead of maintaining the tickler and those darned tickler meetings. Second, there would be no illusion about who was responsible for the performance of the various departments: the department heads were!”
“Don’t preach and hope for ownership; implement mechanisms that actually give ownership…What you want to avoid are the systems whereby senior personnel are determining what junior personnel should be doing.”
“When it comes to processes, adherence to the process frequently becomes the objective, as opposed to achieving the objective that the process was put in place to achieve.”
“‘Think out loud’ made it much easier for me to keep my mouth shut and let them execute their plans.”
“‘Embrace the inspectors’ is a mechanism for organizational control…Concerning areas where we were doing something exceptionally innovative or expertly, we viewed the inspectors as advocates to share our good practices with. Concerning areas where we were doing things poorly and needed help, we viewed them as sources of information and solutions. This created an atmosphere of learning and curiosity among the crew, as opposed to an attitude of defensiveness.”
“One of the two pillars that support control is competence. Competence means that people are technically competent to make the decisions they make.”
It is our objective at our music school in Midland, Texas to bring our students to full competence in their particular discipline.
“We rejected the inevitability of mistakes and came up with a way to reduce them.”
“Something I would wrestle with my entire command tour – balancing the courage to hold people accountable for their actions with my compassion for their honest efforts.”
“‘Take deliberate action’…meant that prior to any action, the operator paused and vocalized and gestured toward what he was about to do, and only after taking a deliberate pause would he execute the action. Our intent was to eliminate those ‘automatic’ mistakes…The key is that as the importance of doing things right increases, so does the need to act deliberately.”
“When the operators paused and vocalized and gestured, it allowed adjacent operators to step in and correct mistaken actions before they were taken.”
We advocate thoughtful practice at our music school in Midland, Texas. Practicing without careful thought, just ‘going through the motions’ is not only unproductive but actually harmful to progress.
“The senior inspector told me this: ‘Your guys made the same mistakes – no, your guys tried to make the same number of mistakes – as everyone else. But the mistakes never happened because of deliberate action. Either they were corrected by the operator himself or by a team-mate.’”
“I learned the hard way that control without competence is chaos…the insight came…that as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance.”
“If all you need to do is what you are told, then you don’t need to understand your craft. However, as your ability to make decisions increases, then you need intimate technical knowledge on which to base those decisions.”
“Training implies passivity; it is done to us. We are trained; we attend training. Learning is active; it is something we do.”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we don’t want our students to mimic us or do exactly what they are told, but rather to understand what they are being asked to do, so that they can replicate it even when the teacher is not present.